Help with the tentative agreement

We've put together a couple of documents to help people review the tentative agreement.  One is a précis which summarizes changes since the last contract and ties them to bargaining objectives. The second is a version of the tentative agreement in which changes since the last agreement are highlighted.  Both are available over on the FA website's page on bargaining.

DRC unanimously recommends tentative agreement

The FA's Departmental Representative Council voted 30-0 this evening to recommend that the members of the FA approve the tentative agreement reached with the administration.  The full agreement is already available on the FA web site, but we should be releasing more information on it, including a summary noting changes since the last contract, by tomorrow (Friday) afternoon.

Tentative agreement released

Here's Randy Hughes' email giving the news. 

Dear Colleagues,

The agreements that were reached last week between the Faculty Association and Board bargaining teams, including all prior tentative agreements, have been compiled into one contract document along with an attached "Back to Work Agreement." Representatives of both the Faculty Association and the Board bargaining teams signed off on the compiled documents yesterday, November 14. The documents are still subject to proofreading and editing to conform with the individual tentative agreements reached throughout the bargaining process.

These documents are now available at the Faculty Association web site for your review:

http://siucfa.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/tentative-agreement.pdf
http://siucfa.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/back-to-work-agreement-final.pdf

A summary of the new contract language and an annotated version of the contract document indicating where changes have been made will be available soon.

Now that there is a tentative agreement on the contract, the next step is for the Departmental Representative Council (DRC) to review and vote on the agreement. A meeting of the DRC is being called for 5:30 p.m. Thursday, November 17. The recommendation of the DRC will be communicated to the membership of the Faculty Association and the membership will vote on ratification in balloting which has been scheduled for Wednesday, November 30. Ratification of the agreement is by majority vote of the Faculty Association membership. A General Membership Meeting for the purpose of presenting the terms contained in the tentative agreement and answering questions concerning the agreement is planned for 5:00 p.m., Monday, November 28 (location TBA). More details about each of these meetings and the balloting process are forthcoming.

Sincerely,
Randy Hughes

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

I am up early and off to a committee meeting (The Sustainability Council).  I would prefer to hibernate or just go in to teach today, but I take my work very seriously and I know it extends well beyond the classroom.


After the break, I'll offer a few post-strike observations.  I am sure the days and weeks to come will provide continued opportunities to hash and rehash what we did or didn't accomplish with this labor action.  I have no illusions that our most fervent critics will ever grant us any accomplishments.  Nonetheless, I return to my regular work both weary and energized -- and I know I am not alone.

Take Heed of Ohio, BOT

We've known all along that the real impetus behind the delay tactics of our contract negotiations was an attempt to bust or cripple the unions.  The Administration was counting on an anti-union wave that seemed to be sweeping the country a year ago.  They banked (and by "banked," I mean invested a LOT of money that we apparently cannot afford) on that sentiment being enough to continue their centralization of power and denial of collective bargaining.  Let's pause to contemplate these bad investments after the break...

FA Bargaining Unit Meeting Tonight at 5:00

Just a post to flag the meeting at the civic center tonight (Sunday). All members of the FA bargaining unit are welcome to attend (members and non-members). The main order of business is to present where negotiations stood at midnight on Wednesday. We aim to provide detailed accounts of our final set of proposals, and the latest from the administration as of that date.  We'll have quick reports from leaders of other locals on their settlements, and a report on the strike so far.  There will also be an update on the progress of negotiations since. We expect to at least have a resumption date & time scheduled, and it's quite possible negotiations will have resumed by 5:00, in which case we'll try to provide some sort of update on what is going on at the table today. And there will be time for Q & A. 

When "Facts" Become Petulant

As the unions kicked off the official opening of Strike Headquarters this afternoon, the Chancellor sent around a new missive proclaiming "facts" about the history of these negotiations.  Was someone jealous there was a party that she was not invited to?  Here's the text of her recent email; I'll have comments for each of her "facts" after the break.

[Click Image to Enlarge.]

Are Faculty Strikes Effective?

If the FA were really guilty of groupthink and I were taking on the role of "mindguard," I would probably hide this recent bit of somewhat depressing news from Inside Higher Education.  But I am not, because despite what our critics say, FA members are pretty open to critique and different points of view.  I'll offer a few comments after the break, but mostly I think this one gets to go forward to comments. 

Bargaining report: workload

I promised a report on the progress of bargaining, as I've heard it at the FA general membership meeting on Thursday, 10/13 (and of course supplemented with what I now from other sources). I'm going to break this report up into a number of chunks (which may also help focus comments). 

I'll only briefly characterize the overall impression I have of the 64k question: How's it going? Since the strike authorization vote, there has been been a change in atmosphere and attitude but rather little substantial progress. Rather than simply saying that they had "no interest" in our proposals, the board team has now been interested in more clearly figuring out just where the two sides disagree. Meetings have also become much more frequent. Hours before the Chancellor's announcement a few weeks ago that her team was willing to meet 24/7 (and her false charge that the FA was responsible for the failure to meet over the summer--when meetings did in fact take place), the administration team did indeed offer many more times for meetings, and lengthy meetings are now occurring on most business days.  On Monday, the teams will meet twice, and the FA team expects new language from the board team on a number of different issues.

I have been impressed, though many of you will not consider me an impartial observer, with the flexibility and creativity of the FA team (in addition to their more obvious persistence). On several crucial issues we have offered a number of different approaches in an effort to meet our interests. This is how Interest Based Bargaining is supposed to work. The sides don't stake out conflicting proposals and bang heads until they meet some place in the middle. Rather, each side attempts to creatively come up with proposals that allow them to meet their interest without undermining essential interests of the other side. This sort of flexibility is particularly clear on the first issue I'll consider below the break, workload.

For a bit on how negotiations with GA United are going, check out their latest bargaining update.

Faculty for No Negotiations

Faculty will have received an email (pasted below) from a wonderfully named group, "Faculty for Sensible Negotiations". I think at this point the main thing that needs to be said about this group is this: they are calling for no negotiations. That is what decertification would mean. To be blunt, whatever decent intentions members of this group may have, the name of this group is a lie.

Progress? Not that I've heard of.

A quick bit of rumor control. I've heard there's a rumor that's going round, a rumor that has even been sourced to me, saying that there's been some "progress" or "movement" at the bargaining table between the FA and the administration. To the best of my knowledge there has been no such progress--certainly the report from the FA bargaining team at the DRC meeting I attended on Thursday night indicated no such thing, and that's the latest news I've heard. Nor have I heard of any progress with any of the other IEA locals.

A Sunday Cartoon

Another cartoon from our anonymous faculty cartoonist. 

Cheng's Counteroffensive

After a long silence, the Chancellor is again speaking on union issues, in a comment in today's DE and in an email.  I'll here try to respond to major points in order.  The full text of Cheng's email is pasted at the end of this post. 

1. The Chancellor has decided to start an unseemly fight about meeting times. I don't think it is in anyone's interest to spend our energies bickering about who turned down more dates. And if you do choose to go this route, at least get your facts straight: the Chancellor has failed to do so. But the whole issue is basically a red herring, and it is based on the false premise that meeting with the other side is all one needs to do to negotiate in good faith. While the pace of meetings can and will presumably pick up, the problem has never been that one side or the other is unwilling to meet, rather that the meetings thus far have not made sufficient progress. But below the break, before moving on to substance, I will squabble back. Skip to 2 if you'd rather avoid this silliness.

"Strike Watch #1"

Most readers will have received the "Strike Watch" email from Randy Hughes already, but I'll paste it below the break for any who haven't, and this post will provide a forum for any who wish to comment on it.

The FA's basic argument, as I see it, is that the administration is refusing to work toward reaching an agreement on a number of issues the FA deems essential. Even the FA doens't expect the administration to agree with most of the FA's proposals on such issues: but it can and should expect and even demand that the administration reach some agreement on crucial points.

To some extent, to be sure, this sort of disagreement is to be expected: the administration will almost always want fewer matters addressed in a contract, the FA more. And there will be some issues where reasonable people could disagree about whether the "flexibility" lost by contractualizing something outweighs the gain in transparency and equity. But among the FA's issues are some pretty essential matters, including workload, tenure, and the administration's claim to the power to unilaterally cut salaries (via furloughs). A contract that fails to address these issues isn't a contract at all, so if the administration continues to refuse to engage in substantive bargaining about them (other than by saying that it retains the sole power to declare furloughs, to layoff faculty, etc.), the FA can't agree to it.

That's why there is a "strike watch", a neat phrase which may in fact be putting things a bit too conservatively. Unless the administration backs down from some of its major impositions in the "last, best, and final" terms imposed on us last spring, there will be a strike. The unions are making plans for a strike. I've seen a calendar with "first strike date"on it. A vote would have to authorize a strike, but I don't think there's any doubt that union members would back a strike if the administration fails to compromise--and only members can vote. If the administration thinks this is a bluff, they need to reconsider.

Cheng: no layoffs or furloughs next year

I finally made time to listen to the Chancellor's regular "morning conversation" gig on WSIU radio from Tuesday (6/14). The big news item was her statement that "the deans" have informed her that there will not be a need for either furloughs or layoffs next year. This even if cuts to state allocations are somewhat worse than the 1.1% in the current budget, perhaps as high as 3%. Thus the overall state budget news, and its impact on SIUC, is good, at least in comparison to last year.

Cheng did return to the issue of a "structural deficit" on campus, and said that "right sizing" the budget (a lovely corporate euphemism), together with meeting this year's cuts, would result in a reduction on campus of somewhere between 2.5% to 5%. Those cuts sound pretty steep, and I also don't fully understand what Cheng means when she talks about a structural deficit, since SIUC ran a surplus last year. My guess is that some of these cuts will mean cutting positions that are already empty--i.e., resigning ourselves to the fact that we're going to have fewer staff in some areas.

Cheng also characterized this good news as meaning that we would be able to move forward to a "better and brighter future" with "employees and programs" intact. This line, if taken literally, will come as a comfort to any worried about the sorts of large-scale program cuts that have gone on elsewhere. Apparently our "right sizing" is going to be done largely via attrition. No suggestion of an end for the hiring freeze, however, or hint of an end to the freeze on salaries.

As I suggested in response to Poshard's email announcing the better than expected state budget, this relatively good news ought to make negotiations easier. But if the administration insists on retaining the power to unilaterally declare furlough days, even if they say they won't need it next year, we'll still have are real debate on our hands. And of course there are other issues, starting, for the FA, with the status of tenure.

Three more matters after the break: the GA healthcare debate, Cheng's more general statements on negotiations, and Cheng's evaluation of her first year in office.

Unions file Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge

The four IEA unions on campus have filed their long-awaited Unfair Labor Practice charges against the SIU Board of Trustees.  Their news release is embedded after the break.  Here's a link to the (brief) Southern Illinoisan story.  The fundamental charge shared by all the unions is that the Board failed to negotiate in good faith; the unions also charge that the Board's unilateral imposition of terms (including furloughs) was unlawful.

My understanding is that the imposition of terms is unlawful if there was no genuine legal impasse between the two sides, because exhaustive (my word) good-faith negotiations had not taken place. Thus the unions would need to show that the administration did not negotiate in good faith to substantiate their first charge; to prove the imposition of terms illegal, my understanding is that the unions would only need to show that whatever, if any, good-faith bargaining took place, it wasn't enough to justify the board's unilateral decision to impose its own terms.  The Board would claim in reply that it made a substantial effort to negotiate in good faith, but that given the stubborn refusal of the unions to budge, and the looming deadline of the end of the fiscal year, it was justified in imposing terms. So who's right?

Negotiations resume

Randy Auxier can correct me here if I'm wrong, as I'm mainly summarizing his report (together with his fellow bargaining team member Daren Callahan) at the FA meeting tonight (Tuesday). The FA bargaining team met this morning with their administrative counterparts for the first time since the administration's imposition of terms. The FA proposed a discussion of workload issues. I'm no expert on this topic, but such concerns are particularly pressing in CASA, where the disconnect between contact hours and credit hours has generated all sorts of problems not readily reducible to the 12 credit hour per semester rule. The administration suggested distance learning, and the FA team agreed--as one of the issues here is indeed how to manage workload and compensation issues. The discussion (more on it after the break) was positive in tone and content, as, at least on the level of general principles, little appears to separate the administration from the FA on this issue.

This is, Randy emphasized, precisely the sort of positive conversation that could have taken place months ago, had the administration team not been focused solely on seeking FA agreement to the four furlough days and, failing that, on getting to impasse. Distance education and workload were among the major items the two sides have never really had the chance to discuss earlier.

Stealth Wisconsin

The DE story on the infamous Town Hall Meeting features the poor prognosis for next year's budget, and all but promises six furlough days next year (perhaps a good interpretation of Cheng's remarks, though not something she made explicit herself). The Southern has a stub of a story on the budget as well.

SIUC, like all public universities (and perhaps a bit more so, thanks to our enrollment issues) does face real financial problems. But the administration's posture seems to be that they decide how to allocate the resources, then tell the unions what their people are going to be paid.  Telling the unions what their people are going to be paid, nicely, and perhaps allowing them to be not paid in half days of their own choosing, counts as "good faith bargaining".

This won't fly. That's not a contract: it's capitulation. It's stealth Wisconsin.*

Town Hall Video

I don't know why I'm lavishing so much coverage on a fairly unimportant event, but our favorite "paranoid" commentator has spotted video of the Town Hall meeting on the Southern's web site.  The slide show and print remarks have yet to appear on the Chancellor's site. Some high (or low) points:

• 17:25 The ostrich slide, which gets lots of laughs. The Chancellor thereafter quickly refutes some of the heresies of the unions.  
• 25:00 My own splendid question and the Chancellor's response.
• 43:09 Rachel Stocking's question about IBB and union busting.

Q & A with the Chancellor

I've got just enough energy left as the semester stumbles to a halt to give you a report on the two difficult questions at the Town Hall meeting this afternoon.

Fairly briefly on the one such question I didn't ask.  Rachel Stocking asked the Chancellor what she thought about Interest Based Bargaining (IBB), and why she'd hired a union-busting law firm to help her bargain in a rather different style. The Chancellor said they'd hired the outside lawyer because they were understaffed. This seems rather disingenuous to me, as the administration usually hires some outside labor lawyer during negotiations. (I don't, as it happens, find this as heinous as some do, though I suppose that will depend on just how heinous a lawyer they hire; but it's a bit like complaining that a politician has hired a political consultant.)  She said little enough about Interest Based Bargaining to lead one to conclude that she has no clear understanding of how IBB is supposed to work, but she covered herself a bit by admitting that she hadn't been trained in IBB.  Neither had any on the administration team, as it happens, as they chose not to get trained, citing the expense, when the FA suggested that each team get this training, with each side paying its own expenses.

Finances here (as elsewhere!) are clearly not the real story.  The real story is that the administration isn't really interested in getting a good contract signed with the unions. They are interested in preserving their own "flexibility" (a.k.a. power) to make decisions without being hampered by any silly old contract. So the less that's in the contract, and, in many cases, the more ambiguous or unclear the contract is, the better. This explains otherwise bizarre oddities like the administration's lack of interest in providing the contract with an index.